Drama Queenie wrote:You are a chauvinist of the quaintest kind. About as threatening as Jack Duckworth, you are a harmless relic of that cherished era when things were 'different'. Now get back to drawing a moustache on that page three model

Larson E. Whipsnade wrote:Ah yeah, they're (mostly) not especially likeable - but there's absolutely no attempt to hide that. They're certainly not being held up as anything other than annoying, over-privileged young people. I don't think you need to relate to them - that's not what the show's about. But they're sufficiently sharp and self-aware and possess enough self-doubt to make them interesting. You've seen developments in their characters over the seasons, too.

The writing's great, she's very clear-eyed about these types. You see and hear everything - it's as honest as it gets. Altho' I'm not sure if showing an overweight nude woman throwing up in the morning is really worth the kind of praise she's getting!

I completely agree apart from the throwing up bit. I actually couldn't stand any of the female leads apart from Shoshanna ( and, incidentally, I love Ray; he's wonderful). I don't think you're meant to like them; I think you're just meant to observe them and their fuck-ups. I understand the frustration in following the self-absorbed doings of these privileged young 'uns, but it's funny, nevertheless.

In terms of how LD portrays that character, I think it's pretty brave, even though she is the most obnoxious persona of them all. I like the way she flaunts her willingness to appear nude; there is something about doing that for a female actor that feels more honest, more assertive, than it would for a male actor- but that could just be me. I like the way that Hannah learns nothing, really, about how to conduct herself, how to treat other people, how to do anything but live in the moment and follow her impulses- however foolish or selfish they might be. There's little in terms of individual redemption, and I think that's refreshing, in fact. It prevents the storylines from being marshalled into predictable arcs of self-improvement.

I binge-watched it a couple of weeks ago, and enjoyed it more than any other box sets I've tried in recent months.

echolalia wrote: I despise Prefab Sprout. It will be decades before “hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque” is surpassed as the most terrible lyric in pop history. That fucking bastard ruined all three things for me forever.

martha wrote:But the characters are the reason that I can't live in San Francisco anymore.

The characters in a TV show are the reason you can't live there? Not the rampant hyper-gentrification that's purging the city of its very soul?

I guess I need to watch more TV.

They are one in the same. Every single one of the characters on girls is some trust-fund mommy and daddy supported artistic wannabe type, contributing nothing but self-importance, driving the rent up because they can always just ask Mommy and Daddy for more or pull it out of their trust fund, taking unpaid internships at dot com startups, that effectively price actually talented and qualified people out of any gigs and moving into the lower rent neighborhoods I loved and driving out the people that live there while simultaneously complaining about homeless people. And their Boomer parents are the pricks that create the unsustainable lifestyle for everyone. Seriously it's like the show runners took everything I hated about New York trust fund babies invading San Francisco set it in Brooklyn and put on HBO.

Larson E. Whipsnade wrote:Ah yeah, they're (mostly) not especially likeable - but there's absolutely no attempt to hide that. They're certainly not being held up as anything other than annoying, over-privileged young people. I don't think you need to relate to them - that's not what the show's about. But they're sufficiently sharp and self-aware and possess enough self-doubt to make them interesting. You've seen developments in their characters over the seasons, too.

The writing's great, she's very clear-eyed about these types. You see and hear everything - it's as honest as it gets. Altho' I'm not sure if showing an overweight nude woman throwing up in the morning is really worth the kind of praise she's getting!

I see where Martha is coming from but I agree with this - I think it's pretty rare to see a show where every single character is unlikeable to the point of irredeemable

Larson E. Whipsnade wrote:Ah yeah, they're (mostly) not especially likeable - but there's absolutely no attempt to hide that. They're certainly not being held up as anything other than annoying, over-privileged young people. I don't think you need to relate to them - that's not what the show's about. But they're sufficiently sharp and self-aware and possess enough self-doubt to make them interesting. You've seen developments in their characters over the seasons, too.

The writing's great, she's very clear-eyed about these types. You see and hear everything - it's as honest as it gets. Altho' I'm not sure if showing an overweight nude woman throwing up in the morning is really worth the kind of praise she's getting!

I see where Martha is coming from but I agree with this - I think it's pretty rare to see a show where every single character is unlikeable to the point of irredeemable

Seinfeld played with the same premise but was much funnier.

Because it's a comedy (and a painfully bad one at that imho). I don't really see Girls as a comedy (or at least it's much more, or attempts to be much more, than a that).

Imagine my delight last night when, noodling through the offerings on Now TV ( having tried The Walking Dead and only managed 40 minutes of the 1st episode), I found that series 6 of Girls had started. It's just as good as ever. Hurrah!

echolalia wrote: I despise Prefab Sprout. It will be decades before “hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque” is surpassed as the most terrible lyric in pop history. That fucking bastard ruined all three things for me forever.

SPOILERS FOR FINAL SEASON. I'm a bit dumbfounded by the final series, which I've just finished. If I start with the last episode - I'm really disappointed in the way the whole thing wraps up. Having essentially ridiculed the ridiculous pressure that is put on women to breastfeed, the very final scene reinforces and builds on precisely that whole fcked-up premise - that if only women "calm down a bit", stop fretting so much, the baby will latch on. And 100s of thousands of women will be watching that series and see that it is precisely this note that the entire series finishes on, this is its concluding thought, the final impression that it wants its viewers to rest on forever. I find it utterly appalling and offensive.

And just in general I found the final series much more disjointed and poorly written - it seems almost like an afterthought from season 5, which actually seemed like a more natural, concluding end to the whole series. Even the soundtrack, which I always thought was quite interesting, became really dull. Shoshana is essentially written out of the series entirely, to focus more and more on Elijah, and I'm not sure what Elijah really ever brings to the series (although I do quite like their conversations/singing before going to bed - but I'm not sure they needed to spend much time developing his character at the expense of others). Marnie essentially becomes nothing more than a joke, spewing out pseudo-psycho babble at every turn (which is quite funny on occasion, but becomes tiring and one-dimensional) - and I felt her relationship to Desi came to a natural end previously so everything else between them in this series was superfluous and boring. I've always liked that Girls never forced the 4 girls to be onscreen at the same time all the time, that they would almost always have episodes that cut the others out to focus on a particular dynamic - but I did feel they overdid this in the final season, and it was disappointing to just have Hannah and Marnie in the final episode. It felt in particular like Jessa needed a better conclusion - and Shoshanna's random engagement gave no real conclusion for her either. And Adam's sudden ditching of Jessa to become a father for Hannah's kid was just downright weird - it's sort of in-character I guess, but it needed more development. Oh well.

Drama Queenie wrote:You are a chauvinist of the quaintest kind. About as threatening as Jack Duckworth, you are a harmless relic of that cherished era when things were 'different'. Now get back to drawing a moustache on that page three model